


Toneless

by WatTheCur



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Illnesses, Missing Scene, Religion, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28754931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatTheCur/pseuds/WatTheCur
Summary: A dying Founder makes a request of her Vorta.
Kudos: 9





	Toneless

“Weyoun, I would like you to sing.” 

From the corner of her humanoid eye, the Founder could see the Vorta’s flutter with confusion. She observed that the lines, blooming from the corners of Weyoun’s eyes were deep, as if scored. The skin beneath his eyes had sunken, darkened to the colour of a fresh bruise. As weak as she was, the Founder knew she could still seat herself steadily. Yet, Weyoun’s gentle hands held her and his knees touched the floor, as he made sure that she need not worry of her falling to it, herself. It was only as she raised her peeling head to gaze into the uncertainty on his face, that he withdrew from her. 

“Forgive me, Founder.” This once, the Vorta did not lower his gaze, but met her dull eyes as his own began to look oily. She was certain that it was for fear of her falling apart entirely, while he was not looking, before he could try to gather her ashes in his arms. “I cannot sing well.” 

“I did not ask you to sing well, simply to sing.” Exhaustion was beginning to take her, she let her head bow. As it did, a great flake of her drifted from somewhere open and ragged on her face. Weyoun’s unfurling hand appeared before the Founder, to catch the dying piece of her. In the warm nest of his palm, the flake shuddered. It liquefied, shifting into a black, glistening globule. A second hand crept into her vision, it’s thumb and forefinger shaped a hesitant beak that plucked the globule from the palm of the first. Weyoun returned the piece to the Founder to her. He placed it into the fragile crust of her lap, as if he were laying a jewel onto an alter. 

“Turn off your translator and sing for me.” The tremors in her voice were now too common to bring her shame. “I am dying, Weyoun 8. I ask you to give me comfort.” 

Her servant’s breaths had begun to sound like something seldom practised. The first, cautious taps of an arthritic craftsman’s hammer. The hands that worried at each other in his lap lifted to switch off the translator in his temple, and she heard the slick sound of him wiping the wetness from his overworked eyes. Her Weyoun, he had always been too fragile of a creature. He stood to move around her, to sink back down before her knees. One hand hovered around her charcoal knee, the other ascended to caress a last tuft of soft hair on her crumbling scalp. His neck arched and he looked about to press his weeping face into a lap that would not hold it, but she only felt the moist gusts of his shuddering breath across her skirts. His next words were in Vortawa, staggering from a constricted throat. 

“My Founder…”

Then seeped out the first, tuneless rasps of a hymn.


End file.
